The Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting is a two-day event organised by NERN and NECOV (Dutch - Flemish Ecological Society) and supported by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

The set-up of the 2010 meeting is in accordance with previous years, which were a great success with over 300 participants. Each day starts with a plenary session in which a Dutch and an international world leader present their view on a specific topic in ecology. Accordingly, parallel sessions will be held covering the wide field of ecology. The session topics listed this year have been selected by an organising committee (Jacintha Ellers (VU), Rampal Ettienne (RUG), Lourens Poorter (WU, Martijn Egas (UVA), Wolf Mooij (NIOO), Nicole van Dam (NIOO/RU, Chair) and Jaap van der Meer (NIOZ)), who also approached the conveners of the sessions. The programme below lists the session topics, the conveners and the highlights indicating the focal area of the session.

Besides oral presentations, time will be reserved for poster sessions and discussion.

Like 2009, various prizes will be awarded at the end of the meeting: the Poster Prize, the Best MSc Project Proposal (both awarded by NECOV) and the NERN Best Paper Award. Call for these awards will follow soon.

Programme

(Note: given the submissions of the parallel sessions, programme is updated on a regular basis)

Plants and animals are involved in a wide range of antagonistic and synergistic interactions including pollination, seed dispersal and herbivory. Although once the domain of distinct disciplines - ecology, molecular biology and phytochemistry - the omics era has merged these fields. However, as in any relationship, learning to communicate is a continuous effort. In this session, speakers that bridged these research fields will explain how it has enriched our understanding of plant-animal interactions.

Highlight:

Environmental changes caused by human disturbance and climate change pose increasing challenges to the conservation of biotic communities and their functions. Habitat loss and fragmentation, for instance, means that conventional conservation efforts must be complemented by restoration of habitat quality, size or connectivity. A changing environment also means that conserving or restoring historical assemblages may no longer be the most sustainable management strategy. The focus of this session is on the integration of conservation and restoration ecology in the light of contemporary and future ecosystems.

Highlight:

What processes determine the structure of aquatic food webs? With the increasingly holistic view taken on studying ecosystems, it is important to understand the structuring of food webs and how external impacts propagate through and change them. Both theoretical and empirical studies can give insight into the processes involved in structuring food webs (e.g. assembly, complexity, multitrophic interactions, spatial processes) and are thus welcomed.

Highlight:

For those ecologists that feel that they do not fit in another session. Please specify why

A major theme in ecological research is to understand the interactions between organisms occurring at different trophic levels. This session discusses new findings on the functioning and importance of multitrophic interactions and the underlying chemical and molecular mechanisms in natural communities. Multitrophic interactions including organisms from different ecosystem compartments (e.g. above- and belowground) and/ or (plant- and animal-) symbionts and mutualists will receive special emphasis

Highlight:

Movement of plants and animals, and of their competitors, predators, diseases or resources, plays an important role in defining spatial patterns. We will explore how these movements affect local ecosystems and how movement is determined by the spatio-temporal structure of these ecosystems.

Highlight:

The session will focus on the determinants of species diversity and species interactions within communities, where we consider both trophic and non-trophic interactions. The aim is to combine insights from theoretical and empirical work.

Highlight:

Co-evolution is defined as reciprocal evolutionary change between interacting species, e.g. between predator and prey, host and parasite or between resource competitors. The outcome of co-evolution is that species become specialized in their interaction with relevant species only. As such, co-evolution is the evolutionary force behind much of what is studied in community-ecology. The session on Evolutionary Ecology will explore to what extend the study of co-evolution and community ecology are intertwined.

Since the days of the ‘Rio Summit’ in 1992, the big biodiversity debate has partly shifted from species diversity to /functional /diversity. An exciting new research field addresses the consequences of (changes in) functional diversity, through species traits, for ecosystem functions and processes, and ultimately for ecosystem services to people. This research recognises that species are not merely numbers but community members with specific qualities and roles in biogeochemical and watercycling involving for instance carbon capture, trophic transfer, decomposition, fire regimes and water purification and storage. We will show through concepts and empirical examples how (climate-driven) changes in the functional trait composition of organisms in ecosystems have knock-on effects on ecosystem services and climate itself.

In the domain of biogeochemical cycles, both marine and terrestrial ecologists are active. The importance of the study of global change and its effect on biochemical cycles becomes evident, if we want to predict future trends as well as understand the past. Currently ecologists are working hard to quantify processes in terrestrial and aquatic systems at regional and global scales that will feed into the next generation of earth system models. In our session we will take stock of current progress and new developments in both tropical and temperate ecosystems in this exciting field

In this session, presentations will be held that are of high quality but could not be placed in already full sessions.

Highlight:

Environmental stresses impair the fitness of populations when first presented. The genetic architectures of organisms have evolved to cope with various stresses with both inducible, plastic responses and by fixation of adapted phenotypes. The session will explore the evolution of animal and plant stress-responses and the genomic approaches used to identify their underlying genetic basis (e.g. inducible signal transduction cascades, divergent gene expression patterns, selection on specific genomic sequences, and/or epigenetic modifications and maternal effects).

Highlight:

The increasing rate of biological invasions due to globalization calls for adequate management measures. This is a major challenge since general rules in invasion ecology, needed for predictions on invasiveness of species and invasibility of ecosystems, are difficult to find. This session will present work that aims to find general rules in invasion ecology, such as characteristics of invaders explaining their invasiveness, ecosystems attributes facilitating alien success, as well as work aiming to produce robust predictions on the potential invasiveness of species in different ecosystems

Invasion success of infectious diseases and the use of elasticity analysis in disease ecology

(Nienke Hartemink, Utrecht University)

12:40

Lunch in the restaurant

14:00

Poster Session Day 2 / Coffee

Location

America Hall

Europe Hall

Asia Hall

Africa Hall

15:00

Parallel 4a: Microbial Ecology

Parallel 4b: Movement Ecology: migration and dispersal

Parallel 4c: Physiological Ecology

Parallel 4d: Global change and biodiversity

Highlight:

Microscopic organisms, bacteria, archaea, unicellular eukaryotes and viruses, far exceed macroscopic organisms in number, biomass and diversity and are crucial to ecosystem functioning and human health. However, knowledge on the ecology of most types of microbes is extremely limited compared to their macroscopic counterparts. This session will highlight original studies in microbial ecology.

Highlight:

Movement ecology seeks to understand the four basic mechanistic components of organismal movement: the initial state (why move?), motion process (how to move?), and navigation (when and where to move?), which are all a combination of the characteristics of the organism and its environment. As we understand plant (seed) and animal movements, we can unravel in more detail the complex role that dispersal and migration play in ecological interactions, spatial patterns and species distributions.

Highlight:

In this session, we aim to present studies of physiological processes that link to the ecological traits of the individual organism, or that connect to ecological processes influencing population dynamics. Emphasis is placed on understanding how animals and plants cope with environmental variation at the physiological level, and on the influence of habitat conditions on growth, metabolism and reproduction of individuals within and among populations, along environmental gradients, and across different communities and ecosystems

Highlight:

Under continual pressure of global changes, biodiversity, encompassing both species richness and functional diversity, acts as a buffer for the loss of ecosystem functions and services. Global changes, including climate or land-use changes, are currently affecting biodiversity in both terrestrial and aquatic systems by disrupting long evolved interactions. Rapid changes occurring throughout the biosphere affect biological interactions at all scales of organization. Here we explore all kind of relations existing between biodiversity and global changes.

Positive effects of organic farming on belowground mutualists: large scale comparison of mycorrhizal fungal communities in agricultural and natural soils

(Erik Verbruggen, Vrije Universiteit)

Dispersal of tropical megafaunal seeds by rodents

(Patrick Jansen, Wagningen University / University of Groningen)

Effects of different time-variable exposure regimes of the insecticide chlorpyrifos on freshwater invertebrate communities in outdoor microcosms

(Mazhar Iqbal Zafar, Wageningen University)

Modelling climate impacts on genetic diversity in metapopulations

(Marleen Cobben, Wageningen University and Research)

Europe Hall

17:20

Closing Session (Hans de Kroon)

·Awards ceremony

oBest PhD research paper Award (Han Olff)

oBest Poster Award (Roland Bobbink)

·Synthesis (Louise Vet)

Lounge

18.00

Fare-well drinks and Dinner

Call for presentations

As can be seen in the programme each parallel session (a, b, c, and d) consists of six 20-minute presentations (15-minute presentation and 5-minute discussion).

Those wanting to contribute to one of the parallel sessions, please contact one of the conveners of that session by sending a mail with the title and abstract of your presentation as well as a possible other session in which your presentation would fit when the session you applied to is full. Deadline for submission is the 10'th of January 2010

After this date, conveners select the six best abstracts of submitted presentations (quality and focus of the session) foe their session. Accordingly, they inform all who have submitted a request to present. Those that cannot present in first instance may be able to present in another session where the presentation would also be able to fit in. All other will be asked to present their work in a poster.

Poster Sessions

As can be seen in the programme, poster session will be organised. Those that want to present a poster, please mention this in your application giving the title of your poster as well as the session it should belong to.

During the closing session on Wednesday afternoon, the NECOV Best Poster Prize(s) will also be awarded. Posters will be evaluated on scientific quality, clarity and attractiveness. First, second and third prizes are € 300, € 200, and € 100 resp.

Fees (Fees must be paid cash when registering at De Wereld in Lunteren).

PhD and MSc (with Bed and Breakfast)

€ 150.-

Others (with Bed and Breakfast)

€ 200.-

PhD and MSc (without Bed and Breakfast)

€ 100.-

Others (without Bed and Breakfast)

€150.-

Day Visitors (PhD and MSc)

€ 50,-

Day Visitor (Others)

€ 70,-

Registration

To register, please fill in the Resgistration form (to download the form click HERE) and send it to pe-office@wur.nl

NOTE:

ALL REQUIRED INFORMATION MUST BE GIVEN TO BE REGISTERED

AFTER REGISTRATION YOU WILL RECEIVE CONFIRMATION WITH THE CANCELLATIONS CONDITIONS

WHEN YOU DO NOT SHOW, YOUR FEE WILL NEVERTHELESS BE CHARGED, INCLUDING € 25,- ADMINISTATION COSTS.